Category Archives: Crime

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The Democrats are running on everything except what matters

The House of Representatives silly “January 6th Committee” held it’s last pre-election meeting, another meeting broadcast on television, as the credentialed media have teamed up with the Democrats to try to maintain their slender majorities in the 2022 elections. The trouble is that the Democrats have no current issues that are important to the voters. The Capitol kerfuffle, a three-hour demonstration of unarmed people, caused a few million dollars in damages — something far, far less serious than the #BlackLivesMatter riots of the previous summer and fall — and they were then over.

The real current issues are the economy and inflation, but the Democrats don’t want to talk, at least not truthfully, about that!

Democrats’ failure to make 2022 about the threat to democracy

Analysis by Aaron Blake | Tuesday, October 18, 2022 | 11:29 AM EDT

Utah voters who tuned into Monday night’s Senate debate were treated to something relatively rare in the 2022 election: a candidate putting Jan. 6, 2021, front and center in his closing argument. Independent Evan McMullin seized upon texts Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) sent to the White House indicating a willingness to help President Donald Trump contest the 2020 election results, saying Lee “betrayed your oath to the Constitution.”

Despite the well-publicized Jan. 6 hearings, including the likely final one, held last week, the insurrection has not been an overarching focus of Democrats’ 2022 campaign messaging. Politico reported last week that Jan. 6 has featured in less than 2 percent of ads run for House Democrats.

Maybe, just maybe, the actual Democratic candidates, as opposed to ‘pundits’ like Amanda Marcotte or formerly Republican #NeverTrumpers like Bill Kristol and Jennifer Rubin who have former President Trump living rent-free in their skulls, need to do something really, really radical like win votes, and they are a bit more in tune with what concerns voters most.

Even President Biden’s handlers minions recognize that truth, not that there’s anything they can do other than lie about it. Yeah, most families are focused on putting food on the table and keeping a roof over their heads, but the ability of the working class to do just that has suffered under President Biden. Most Americans are not better off today than they were in 2019.

This lacuna in their messaging comes even as most House Republicans supported Trump’s baseless last-ditch election challenges that led to the attack on the Capitol, and even as a majority of the GOP’s most prominent candidates have either denied or questioned the 2020 election results.

Indeed, a new poll reinforces that Democrats haven’t really driven the argument home. Many Americans view Trump as a major threat to democracy. But the Republican Party more broadly? Not so much.

Of course, many Americans view that Democrats as a far greater threat, as the far-left wing has pushed ‘transgenderism’ in the schools, in ways that a lot of parents see as personally threatening to their children, which is why Glenn Youngkin rather than Terry McAuliffe is now Governor of Virginia, and Republicans control the state House of Delegates as well. Mr Kristol’s The Bulwark has gone all out pro-transgenderism, to show you just how far the #NeverTrump former Republicans have gone. The Republican neo-conservatism of the Bush years has moved wholly toward the Democratic Party, including their foreign interventionism when it comes to the war between Russia and Ukraine.

A New York Times/Siena College poll shows that 45 percent of Americans regard Trump as a “major” threat to democracy, while just 28 percent say the same of the GOP.

That 28 percent figure is actually smaller than the percentage who view the Democratic Party as a threat to democracy (33 percent) — despite there being no comparable example of Democrats trying to overturn an election. (And no, Stacey Abrams and Hillary Clinton aren’t analogous.)

Actually, yes, they are. When you consider the definition of analogous, “similar in a way that invites comparison : showing an analogy or a likeness that permits one to draw an analogy,” it’s not difficult to see how those two ladies’ reactions to their electoral defeats were attempts to undermine the legitimacy of the victors.

Some of this is partisanship — along with Republicans’ successful attempts to play up the issue of voter fraud, despite the utter lack of evidence that it’s a major problem in American elections. Polls have long shown Republicans and Democrats view the other side as a threat to democracy, but for very different reasons.

But if you dig a little deeper, you’ll see that isn’t the full story: It’s also the case that many Democratic voters haven’t been convinced that the problem goes beyond Trump.

The poll shows that 71 percent of Trump 2020 voters regard Democrats as a major threat to democracy. But just 52 percent of Biden voters say the same about the GOP.

Also see: Robert Stacy McCain: Denial is not a strategy

Despite his rent-free residency in the brains of the far left, Donald Trump simply isn’t immortal; he’s 76 years old, and will be 78 by the time the 2024 elections come around. He’s significantly overweight, and, despite his wealth, eats garbage. Even if he were elected in 2024, he’d be constitutionally limited to just four years in office. But the policies of today’s Democratic Party, mandating plug-in electric vehicles that most Americans cannot afford, pushing drastic social changes that many Americans dislike, and ignoring increasing violent crime rates, would last a lot longer than that.

After several paragraphs, some of which reveal the author’s clear bias in favor of the Democrats, we come to his conclusion:

But the integrity of the democratic process is something Democrats and the Jan. 6 committee have pitched as being of the utmost importance — going to the core of who we are as a country. Yet at this point, with just half of Biden voters and one-quarter of independents saying the GOP is a major threat to democracy, it’s clearly not something they’ve convinced voters is truly at stake in 2022.

Why do I, personally, believe that the Democrats are the far greater threat? Their responses, primarily by Democratic Governors, to COVID-19 were heavily weighted toward dictatorial control and the blatant abridgement of our constitutional rights. That the government can order churches closed, or restrict our First Amendment right of peaceable assembly, ought to be anathema, but Democratic — and sadly, a few Republican as well — Governors did just that, and thanks to the unreasoning fear instilled by the government, millions and millions of people accepted that as reasonable and legitimate.

At least here in the Bluegrass State, Republican state legislative candidates ran hard against Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) authoritarian dictates, and the voters rewarded the GOP with an additional 14 seats in the state House of Representatives, and two more in the state Senate. I’d like to see that be more important to other voters, but I guess that we’ll see in 20 more days.

Well, who knows? The poll numbers favor the Republicans, but the only poll which really matters will be taken on November 8th, and surprises have been known to happen before.

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Some people would rather be less safe than cooperate with and support the police

If you want to know why homicides in Philadelphia are both proceeding along record numbers and being solved at very low rates, The Philadelphia Inquirer has decided to tell you. Trouble is, I don’t think that they meant to convey the message that they did.

Black and Latino residents in University City feel the weight of police presence

The neighborhood is home to several overlapping police patrols, which doesn’t make everyone who lives there feel safe.

by Nate File | Monday, October 17, 2022

If you were to start your workday in University City by arriving at 30th Street Station, then walking along Market Street for a few blocks before turning towards UPenn, you would have been subjected to at least seven separate and overlapping police patrols.

Of course, if you debark at the 30th Street SEPTA Station, you’re going to be greeted by a large amount of used drug injection needles just laying around on the tracks, so you just might get the impression that the 30th Street Station isn’t the nicest place in the city.

The jurisdictions you would have passed through are: SEPTA and Amtrak Police, UPenn and Drexel Police, unarmed University City District public safety, and the 16th and 18th precincts of the Philadelphia Police Department. University City is blanketed with police officers, and Black and Latino residents feel it every day.

The police’s larger presence here is not entirely condemned or welcomed by residents; feelings can be mixed. But what is clear is that the police’s presence often feels overwhelming to the neighborhood’s most marginalized people.

There were 499 murders in the City of Brotherly Love in 2020, and a record-shattering 562 in 2021. This year is seeing a slight dip in the homicide rate, a whopping 1.86% fewer than on the same date last year, but still on track for 543 murders for the year.

As we have previously noted, that neighborhood is hardly the worst in Philly, but yes, murders have been committed there, recently.

After a couple of paragraphs noting the University of Pennsylvania’s investments in the neighborhood, and its campus police department, we come to this:

It also invested in its police force; UPenn currently has the largest privately funded police force in the state with over 120 officers. Drexel’s police force is much smaller, with about a third as many officers, but it has only been in operation since 2010.

Tamika Diggs, a Black woman who has lived in University City her entire life and works in the area too, has noticed that investment.

“There has been a change in the 30 something years that I’ve been in University City. Initially, there was just a regular police department. You didn’t really see a large police presence. However, as more gentrification happened… more Black and brown families were pushed out of the area, you (saw a surge) of more police,” she said.

“You certainly feel a sense of surveillance,” said Christopher Rogers, a Black PhD student at UPenn. Rogers feels a tangible difference in how much he is watched and perceived by law enforcement in University City as compared to elsewhere in Philadelphia.

He described the burden of the police’s presence more as an everyday “weight”, as opposed to having excessive confrontations with them.

So, Mr Rogers hasn’t has any interactions with the police that he saw as necessary to mention to the Inquirer’s reporter, but he just feels that they’re around. That the police forces are there to try to protect law-abiding citizens from criminals doesn’t seem to be important to him.

There are several more paragraphs in a similar vein, but the concluding three are the important ones:

But investigations and promises can’t undo firmly entrenched problems, and they so far haven’t changed the way Black and Latino residents of University City feel about the police.

“I think there’s an assumption that everyone else that’s not a student is … (dangerous) for the students that are at Penn or Drexel,” said Olivia.

Diggs has made sure to teach her teenage sons to be careful of how they present in public for that very reason. “I always tell them—my youngest is 6-foot-3—’You are not looked at as a teenager by (University City District), Drexel, any police officers … you’re looked at as a grown man. And so when you walk outside, you have to act accordingly.’”

Well, yes, people ought to act like adults! That’s what Olivia — who declined to provide her last name to the Inquirer reporter — is supposed to be teaching her kids.

Here we have several stories, from black and Hispanic residents in one of Philadelphia’s nicer communities, telling us just how much they dislike and distrust the police. But think about that: before very liberal and #woke Jim Kenney became mayor, the previous two mayors, John Street and Michael Nutter, were black. From 2010 into mid 2017, the District Attorney was black. For all of Mayor Nutter’s eight years in office, the Police Commissioner, Charles Ramsey, was black, his successor, Richard Ross, Jr, was black, and the current Commissioner, Danielle Outlaw, is black. The District Attorney, Larry Krasner, is a progressive, police-hating defense attorney, so Philadelphia’s black population know that he’s not going to pursue cases in which there is really any question about guilt.

There’s really nothing more the city of Philadelphia could reasonably do to engender trust betweenj law enforcement and the black community. Yet reporter Nate File was only able to document black or Hispanic residents in a rebuilding, gentrifying area, minority residents who would be generally better off than their minority brethren in the combat zones, who were still very leery of the police.

This, to me, reveals why Philadelphia is the most internally segregated city of over a million people in the United States, because Philadelphians are segregated mentally, segregated in their mindsets to the point that they’d prefer to live in a less safe area than support the police who are trying to make things safer.

Until the black, Hispanic, white, and Asian populations in the City of Brotherly Love can come closer together culturally, the city will remain segregated, and remain violent. That will take a long, long time to change.

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2022 wins the Gold Medal in Lexington!

2022 has won Lexington’s Gold Medal!

Oh, it was no surprise, given that the city had tied its all-time homicide record on Sunday, September 25. At the time, the city was seeing one murder every 7.24 days, so the fact that it has taken three weeks to reach record-breaking 38 is at least somewhat good news.

Man dies after stabbing on Bryan Avenue; New record for homicides in Lexington

by Karla Ward | Saturday, October 15, 2022 | 12:10 PM EDT | Updated: 8:18 PM EDT

A man died after being found with stab wounds late Friday night.

Lexington police said they were called to the 1000 block of Bryan Avenue to help the Lexington Fire Department with an unresponsive person at 11:43 p.m. The man was pronounced dead at the scene, police said in a news release Saturday morning.

The Fayette County coroner’s office had not released the victim’s name as of noon Saturday. No arrests have been made in the case.

The homicide means Lexington has officially surpassed its record of 37 homicides set in 2021. The city tied its previous record with the shooting death of Adetokundo Okunoye on Oxford Circle Sept. 25.

The numbers are slightly better. With 37 homicides in 287 days, or one every 7.55 days, Lexington is on track for 48.33 murders in 2022, which is down from the 50.39 I projected three weeks ago.

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He had a second chance, and he blew it

If you robbed a bank, got caught, and sentenced to five year in the big house, and somehow managed to get a university professorship, you’d have to think that you had gotten a huge, lucky break, and you need to straighten up and fly right, wouldn’t you? If you had an annual salary of $173,422 as a university department head, you’d think that you’d really turned your life around and pretty much had it made, right?

UK professor arrested for sexual abuse of a minor was ‘model teacher,’ personnel file says

by Monica Kast | Thursday, October 13, 2022 | 1:47 PM EDT | Updated 1:57 PM EDT

Kevin Real, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

The University of Kentucky professor who was arrested last month for sexual abuse of a minor and incest was convicted of robbing a bank in the 1980s and was sentenced to five years in jail, according to court documents.

When asked if the university was aware that Kevin Real, the chair of the UK Department of Communication, had been convicted of bank robbery before his employment at UK, the university declined to comment. Real remains on paid leave from the university, UK spokesperson Jay Blanton told the Herald-Leader.

Real appeared to be well-liked among colleagues and students, according to his UK personnel records the Herald-Leader obtained through an open records act request. In a letter of recommendation for Real to receive the Outstanding Teacher Award in 2015, one colleague called him “a model teacher.”

There’s more at the original.

You know, that’s actually a common feature in stories about sexual predators: they are always well-liked by the people who know them.

Lexington Herald-Leader reporter Monica Kast did a better job than Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Vinny Vella in concealing whether Dr Real’s (alleged) victim was a boy or a girl:

Real was arrested on Sept. 8 by the Lexington Police Department on charges of incest, first degree sexual abuse of a person under the age of 12 and first degree sodomy. According to his arrest citation, Real allegedly abused the victim when they were 6 years old, and again in July 2022.

His bond hearing took place Thursday morning, where Real was permitted to leave house arrest as long as he stays in Fayette County and avoids certain locations. He will continued to be electronically monitored and must stay 1,000 feet away from a local high school and the residence of his victim. In court documents, Real denied the allegations against him.

At the time of his arrest, Dr Real was assigned a $30,000 bail, which was reduced to $15,000 the following day. He was ordered into home confinement with electronic monitoring, though allowed to make limited released, and have no contact with children other than his own. Following a court hearing on Thursday, the conditions of his release were lightened: he’s still under electronic monitoring, but he is allowed to travel throughout Fayette County, as long as he avoids certain locations. Under Kentucky law, any suspect not charged with murder is entitled to have a reasonable bail set, which begs the question of whether $15,000 is reasonable.

  • Under KRS §510.110, first degree sexual abuse of a child under 12 years old is a Class C Felony.
  • Under KRS §510.070, first degree sodomy of a child under 12 is a Class A Felony.
  • Under KRS §530.20, incest with a child under 12 is a Class A Felony.
  • Under KRS §532.060, the penalty for a Class A felony is not less than 20 years, nor more than 50 years, or life imprisonment; for a Class C felony, the term is not less than 5 years nor more than 10 years in prison.

Only Dr Real and the (alleged) victim absolutely know whether he is guilty, but if he did commit those crimes and is convicted of a Class A felony, he’ll never get out of jail; he’s already 65 years old. And that means he has every reason to make a run for the border.

$15,000 bail, for a man who had been receiving — and is still receiving; he’s on paid suspension — a salary of $173,422, $15,000 is really nothing, not for a bail amount. He has the money, and the freedom to move around Fayette County, to get a stolen car with a bogus license plate, cut off his ankle bracelet, and get the heck out of town! If he can get as far west as Kansas, he’d be entering the mostly empty states, and could turn either north or south, and head to Canada or Mexico, borders which are not really well defended.

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Is this why Central Bucks schools have been pushing back against LGBTQ+ agenda?

We have previously noted how the Central Bucks school district has drawn all sorts of fire from the left as the district pursues a path of excluding sexually-charged materials in school libraries and stated that teachers and staff should not use ‘transgendered’ students’ preferred names and pronouns without the consent of their parents. I have to wonder: did this case help push the school district in its decisions?

A former Central Bucks teacher entered a no-contest plea to molesting and secretly recording his students

Joseph Ohrt, a longtime fixture at schools in the district, touched two of the victims inappropriately during incidents in the 1990s, according to prosecutors.

Joseph Ohrt, via the Bucks County Herald. Click to enlarge.

by Vinny Vella | Thursday, October 13, 2022 | 2:15 PM EDT

A once-prominent teacher in the Central Bucks School District entered a no-contest plea Thursday to molesting two of his former students and secretly recording another one.

Joseph Ohrt, 57, entered the plea to indecent assault, corruption of minors, invasion of privacy and tampering with evidence before Bucks County Court Judge Jeffrey Finley on what was initially scheduled to be the first day in his criminal trial.

Ohrt’s attorney, Matthew Sedacca, declined to comment after the hearing.

For nearly 40 years, Ohrt was a fixture in the Central Bucks district, serving as a music teacher and choral director at various middle, elementary and high schools. He gained recognition beyond the region in 2021, when the pop singer P!nk, who attended Central Bucks West High in her youth, praised him on Twitter and in one of her music videos as an early mentor of hers.

There’s more at the original, including a statement that parents of students had claimed in court filings that Mr Ohrt’s behavior was an “open secret” in the schools, though the Inquirer article did not specify whether the claim was that this was an open secret among students only, or if any teachers or staff were also aware.

Vinny Vella, the article author, was very careful to conceal the sex of the students molested by Mr Ohrt, because that’s just so politically incorrect, but he revealed it in the eighth paragraph:

County prosecutors first began investigating Ohrt in May 2021, when a former student reported that Ohrt had touched him and told him he loved him while he was a senior at Central Bucks West in 2016. After the student graduated, during a choir trip to Kansas City, Ohrt shared a bed with him and put his hand down the teen’s pants, according to the affidavit of probable cause for Ohrt’s arrest.

So, the molestation, the “grooming,” was homosexual in nature. Naturally, I took a screen capture of that paragraph, because I strongly suspect that the story will be subsequently edited to hide that fact. Surely, surely! one of Mr Vella’s editors will notice this, but now that it’s out there, and an [insert slang term for the rectum here] both noticed and documented it, the Inky might have no real choice but to leave it up, because they might figure that, having been noticed and documented, the Inquirer’s bias would be publicly noted . . . again.

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Danielle Outlaw is disgusted, and Larry Krasner is disgusting.

Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw released a statement after three SWAT Team officers were shot and wounded, though none fatally, while attempting to serve a warrant in the Richard Allen housing projects on North 10th Street Wednesday morning:

Today, shortly after 6 AM, while serving a warrant on a murder suspect, members of our SWAT unit were fired upon. As the officers were knocking and announcing the warrant, without warning, this suspect fired through a window and door. Three of our brave officers were shout by the assailant, but were still able to return gunfire.  By the grace of God, it appears our officers will physically recover from their wounds.

The suspect was killed in the exchange.

Although I am currently in Dallas, Texas, for the Major Cities Chiefs’ Conference, I was grateful to be able to speak with the officers involved, and thank them for their remarkable service to our city.

While our SWAT officers are highly-trained professionals, this is yet again another cold reminder of the dangers involved in the work they do. Warrant service is always a high-risk assignment; particularly when the suspect is wanted in connection to violent crime.

That, of course, is why the SWAT Team officers were wearing body armor and helmets; they knew that the “suspect,” Raheem Lee, was armed and willing to kill people.

But let me make sure something is perfectly clear: it is NOT the job of our officers to be shot at.

Well, it shouldn’t be, but apparently a fairly sizable segment of the city’s population do believe that it is the job of police officers to be shot at. The Philadelphia Inquirer tried to make a hero out of young Thomas Siderio, who shot at police. And District Attorney Larry Krasner wants to try for murder officers who shoot back and kill offenders.

The Commissioner then, without naming his name, begins her criticism of Mr Krasner, the anti-police defense attorney who, thanks to $1.45 million from George Soros, was elected District Attorney.

It is not their job to be stabbed, spat upon, accosted or attacked in any way. And this type of violence towards our police — towards anyone — cannot continue to be normalized.

We are tired of arresting the same suspects over and over again, only to see them right back out on the street to continue and sometimes escalate their criminal ways.

We are tired of having to send our officers into harm’s way to serve warrants on suspects who have no business being on the street in the first place.

No — not everyone needs to be in jail. But when we repeatedly see the extensive criminal histories of those we arrest for violent crime, the question has to be asked as to why they were yet again back out on the street and terrorizing our communities.

A whole lot more people do need to be in jail, but the voters of the City of Brotherly Love first elected, and then, by a landslide margin, re-elected Mr Krasner, who not only made the promise to drastically reduce the number of criminals locked up, but kept his promise.

I am beyond disgusted by this violence. Our entire department is sickened by what is happening to the people that live, work, and visit our city.

Residents are tired of it.

Business owners are tired of it.

Our children are tired of it.

We are long past “enough is enough.”

As your Police Commissioner, I can promise you this: Our officers will not be intimidated, and we will continue to do everything we can to make Philadelphia a safer place to live.

Philadelphians keep saying that they want the violence to stop, but at the same time, they keep voting for the public officials who let the bad guys go, who won’t take responsibility for the results of their policies,

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The Philadelphia Inquirer really, really hates cops!

I suppose that I shouldn’t have been surprised. On Tuesday, October 11th, the day that the Philadelphia Police Department reported that 423 people had been murdered in the City of Brotherly Love, the website home page of The Philadelphia Inquirer had, in their “Philly Tips” section, “How to file a complaint against a Philly police officer”.

No, I am not including the link, and yes, perhaps I should have taken a larger screenshot of the main page to document its location better, but it’s really not surprising that the very #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading Inquirer would have something like that.

Of course, the Inky was doubtlessly distraught because the George Soros-sponsored, police-hating defense lawyer who became District Attorney, Larry Krasner — whom the Inky endorsed for re-election — and his minions had totally bungled a murder case against a city police officer:

A Philly judge threw out all charges in the murder case against former police officer Ryan Pownall

Common Pleas Court Judge Barbara A. McDermott ruled that prosecutors years ago had failed to provide sufficient legal instructions to a grand jury as it weighed whether or not to charge Pownall.

by Chris Palmer | Tuesday, October 11, 2022

A Philadelphia judge dismissed all charges Tuesday against former city police officer Ryan Pownall, ruling that prosecutors had failed years ago to provide proper legal instructions to a grand jury as it weighed whether to charge him with murder in a 2017 on-duty shooting.

Common Pleas Court Judge Barbara A. McDermott said there were “so many things wrong” with how the District Attorney’s Office instructed grand jurors before they approved a presentment recommending murder charges in the landmark case.

In particular, McDermott said during a pretrial hearing, prosecutors had failed to provide the panel with information on how and when officers are legally justified in firing their weapons. “How could the grand jury do [its] job without knowing that?” she asked.

She chastised prosecutors for what she viewed as a series of other errors, saying that if a defense attorney had behaved in a similar fashion before her, “I would declare them incompetent.”

There’s more at the link, but Big Trial Blog has the story in more detail, by a writer who actually knows what he’s doing:

Clown Show: Judge Tosses D.A.’s Faulty Murder Case Against Cop

by Ralph Cipriano | Tuesday, October 11, 2022

The clown show that is the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office was fully exposed this afternoon in the courtroom of Common Pleas Court Judge Barbara McDermott.

At the end of a more than two-hour hearing, McDermott ruled that the D.A.’s Aug. 23, 2018 grand jury indictment of former police officer Ryan Pownall for murder was riddled with so many legal errors that she was quashing the grand jury’s report, known as a presentment because it was “no good” and it’s “conclusions cannot be relied on.”

What was so wrong with the grand jury presentment that charged Pownall for murder in the racially-charged 2017 shooting death of dirt biker David Jones?

Well for starters, the grand jury was run by former Assistant District Attorney Tracy Tripp, who, depending upon your viewpoint, was either [a] totally incompetent or [b] corrupt, or [c], the correct answer, both totally incompetent and corrupt.

In the Pownall case, Krasner, who had just taken office in January 2018, was looking for the first cop he could publicly hang for murder. And that happened to be Ryan Pownall, who fatally shot Jones, who was armed and on the run, while attempting to escape arrest.

For Krasner, the scheming arsonist, it was a perfect case for making headlines because Pownall was white and Jones was black. But the problem was that Krasner’s office is so lame and inept that Krasner relied on Tripp to do the job. And operating behind the closed doors of the grand jury, the rookie prosecutor completely botched the hit.

For Tripp, a former public defender who joined Krasner’s office in February, 2018, running the Pownall grand jury was [a] her first grand jury investigation and [b] her first murder case.

The only qualification that Tripp the novice prosecutor had to be a running a grand jury investigation of a former cop for murder was that she was a true believer like Krasner, the progressive reformer who hates cops, and wanted to nail one of them for murder.

There’s a lot more at the original, and I’d really like to quote it all, but that would be a copyright violation. But, not to worry, unlike what I have often called The Philadelphia Enquirer[2]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt., the Big Trial blog is not behind a paywall.

Mr Cipriano continues on to list not one, but several errors, not only by ADA Tripp, but the current Assistant District Attorneys at the hearing, Vince Corrigan and Lyandra Retacco, performed poorly in trying to salvage the case. Of course, when you are trying to defend and salvage incompetence, it’s difficult to look coherent yourself.

It was so bad that not even Chris Palmer, one of Krasner’s dedicated apologists at The Philadelphia Inquirer, could fully clean up the mess in a late developing story that the Inky promptly ushered off the front page of its newly designed website.

ADAs Corrigan and Retacco let it be known that Mr Krasner’s office would attempt to recharge Mr Pownell, at which point the judge warned them that they had better give him a preliminary hearing, another step they’d skipped the first time around.

I checked the Inky’s website Wednesday morning, and at least as of this writing, neither the Editorial Board nor any of the newspaper’s columnists had weighed in on the case.

The District Attorney wants the use of force statutes changed, because he loves going after policemen, far more than he likes going after the killers who have sent 424 Philadelphians to their deaths, but things haven’t worked out well for him:

The Philly DA’s Office will not appeal a recent ruling on police shootings to the U.S. Supreme Court

The decision potentially clears the way for former officer Ryan Pownall to be tried for murder this fall.

by Chris Palmer | Wednesday, August 10, 2022

Philadelphia prosecutors said Wednesday they do not plan to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review a recent Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision on the constitutionality of the state’s use-of-force law for police — potentially clearing the way for former city officer Ryan Pownall to be tried for murder this fall.

The decision, announced in court Wednesday, came several weeks after Pennsylvania’s high court rejected a challenge by District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office to the state statute governing how and when on-duty officers are permitted to use their weapons.

Prosecutors said they believed Pennsylvania’s law violates the state constitution and the Fourth Amendment because it permits officers to shoot fleeing suspects even if there is no threat of imminent death or serious injury.

But in a 4-2 decision last month, the high court said it believed Krasner’s office had chosen the wrong venue — Pownall’s trial — to try to upend a portion of the state criminal code, which is written by the legislature.

There’s more at the original, and yes, if you aren’t a subscriber to the Inquirer, there’s a paywall which restricts you to just a few free stories a month. I subscribe so that you needn’t. But, simply put, Mr Krasner does not want the police to be able to use deadly force to stop a fleeing suspect, even if that fleeing suspect is known to be armed and to have used his weapon. This is important, because the District Attorney wants to try former Officer Edsaul Mendoza, who shot fleeing Thomas Siderio, after young Mr Siderio had fired a shot at police, which caused a flying glass injury to another officer. Commissioner Danielle Outlaw discharged the officer, yet declined to name him, for his safety, but the Inquirer, hating cops the way they do, published his name, with Chris Palmer being one of the article authors. I saw that as the Inky trying to get Officer Mendoza killed.

Because Mr Mendoza has been charged with first degree murder, he is being held without bail.

So far, the Inky has not opined that the SWAT officers, three of whom were shot and wounded by a murder suspect Wednesday morning, should be charged with a crime for returning fire and killing the suspect, and the case is so obvious that even the editors of the Inquirer might just keep their keyboards quiet, but I wouldn’t be that surprised if they didn’t.

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.

↑2 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
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Killadelphia: another 13-year-old (probable) gang-banger wannabe bites the dust * Updated! * If the Philadelphia media don't step up, don't start telling the unvarnished truth, they will not have done everything they can to reduce the carnage

That the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page showed that seven people had been sent untimely to their eternal rewards over the four days since the last report — the PPD does not issue updated reports on the weekend or holidays — wasn’t exactly a surprise: not only had I heard of five killings via Philly Crime Update, but seven killings over a weekend is simply not uncommon in the City of Brotherly Love.

From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

13-year-old boy killed in West Oak Lane shooting

The boy was outside on the corner of 65th Avenue and North Smedley Street when he was shot just before 6:50 p.m.

by Robert Moran | Monday, October 10, 2022

A 13-year-old boy was fatally wounded in a shooting Monday evening in the city’s West Oak Lane section, police said.

The story was originally entitled 13-year-old boy critically wounded in Philadelphia shooting, so reporter Robert Moran began it before he was notified that the victim had died.

Just before 6:50 p.m., the boy was outside on the corner of 65th Avenue and North Smedley Street when he was shot at least one time in the face, said Chief Inspector Scott Small.

The boy was rushed by police to Einstein Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at 9:12 p.m., Small said.

The boy, who lived about four blocks away, was believed to have been visiting friends in the area when he was shot by possibly two assailants who then ran from the scene, Small said.

There’s your first red flag: if the young victim was shot “by possibly two assailants” who then fled, you’re getting the first clue that this wasn’t a tragic accident, but a gang killing, though the Inky would apparently prefer a term like “cliques of young men.”[1]We were reliably informed by The Philadelphia Inquirer that there are no gangs in the city, just “cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families,” who sometimes … Continue reading Nevertheless, Mr Moran continued with a bit more, setting the stage for another heart-wrenching story:

Jerry T. Jordan, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, issued a statement identifying the boy as a student at Wagner Middle School.

“Our city is once again reeling from the murder of a child — a thirteen-year-old boy in West Oak Lane whose life was stolen from him, robbed of his future dreams and aspirations, never to even graduate eighth grade. My heart breaks for all who knew and loved him: his family, his friends, his neighbors, the entire Wagner Middle School community; the impact of such a tragedy is measureless,” Jordan said.

While the Inquirer hadn’t identified the victim as of 5:35 PM EDT, Steve Keeley of Fox 29 News did, via a tweet. Sure seems like the beginning of a new story telling us what a great kid he was, and how his life was ended before he ever lived it.

That, however, might be jumping the gun. People knew who this victim was, and knew enough to check his social media accounts. Will B Late tweeted:

These photos are from what appears to be his tiktok account. If it is indeed him, he can be seen in the video with a gun, drugs and making signs. Horror at a 13 year old being murdered is founded. The question becomes, how is a 13 year old being enabled to live and die like this?

Mr Late added three photos as evidence. Mr Late stated that he blurred the faces, because many of the boys pictured are probably minors.

The Philadelphia media, other than Fox 29 News, really don’t cover most of the murders, because most of the killings in the city involve members of one “rival street group” shooting members of another “rival street group,” and a whole lot of people see these things as public service homicides. If some gang-bangers are wiping out other gang-bangers, well, that’s the risk you take when you become a member of a “clique of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families“.

But while the boys who are susceptible to joining such “groups”, who see a glamorized “gangsta life“, probably hear that it’s dangerous, the media need to put out the facts, the brutal, uncensored, tell-it-like-it-is truth, a truth which might make some of them think twice, and more than twice, and strengthen the parents to keep a much closer eye on their kids.

For the family of young Jeremiah Wilcox, assuming that the identification of his name and social media are accurate, it’s too late. There are, I assume, parents and grandparents and siblings and neighbors who are saddened, are crying, that Mr Wilcox is dead. But if the Philadelphia media, especially the Inquirer, which has the space to really delve into and publish the facts, something television news doesn’t really do that well, don’t step up, don’t tell the unvarnished truth, they will not have done all that they can to reduce the number of Jeremiah Wilcoxes bleeding out their life’s blood in Philly’s mean streets.
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Update! Tuesday, October 11, 2022 | 7:53 PM EDT

The previous was published at 5:47 PM EDT. I hadn’t expected it quite so soon, but yup, the Inquirer is here to tell us what a wonderful boy young Mr Wilcox was:

‘He was just a baby’: The family of a 13-year-old who was fatally shot remember him as a loving, protective boy

Jeremiah Wilcox, 13, was fatally shot Monday evening in West Oak Lane, just a block from his middle school. “He was just a baby,” cried his aunt Jamillah Patterson. “He didn’t deserve this.”

by Ellie Rushing | Tuesday, October 11, 2022 | 6:26 PM EDT

It was 6:36 p.m. Monday when Jasmine Wilcox spoke on the phone with her 13-year-old son, Jeremiah, for what she did not know would be the last time.

“Jeremiah, you OK?” she asked.

“Yes, Mom, I’m outside talking to my friends,” Wilcox recalled her son saying. “And I said, ‘OK it’s a school night. Be home by 8.”

Twelve minutes later, Jeremiah was shot twice, struck in the head and body, police said, as he stood outside his friend’s house in West Oak Lane.

Sure sounds like a good kid, huh?

Jeremiah Wilcox, aka “Jay” or “Jerry,” was a sweet, funny boy, who was protective of his family and loved his mama, (Jasmine Wilcox, his mother) said. He had a bright smile and loved to make his family laugh, they said, but wasn’t afraid to speak his mind if something was bothering him. He liked football and basketball, and played casually with friends. In his free time, he watched anime and played video games like Fortnite and Call of Duty with his cousins.

Cheesesteaks were his favorite food, and he got his sweet tooth from his mom, she said.

He kept the waves in his hair fresh, his family said, and he knew he was handsome, always talking to and flirting with girls.

Jeremiah was an eighth grader at Wagner Middle School, just a block from where he was shot. He and his mom had started looking at high schools for next year, she said, and he was interested in attending Roxborough High for its engineering program and football team.

There’s a lot more at the original, all of it letting us know what a fine, upstanding young man he was. What was not in the story was any mention at all of the allegations in social media that young Mr Wilcox might have been a wannabe gang-banger, including no refutation of those claims.

So, are the claims true? We don’t know yet, but those allegations are definitely out there. It’s going to be an interesting development, to see whether the Inky rushed forward with one of their “innocents” killed, without checking it out, or whether the claims that young Mr Wilcox was a gang-banger wannabe flashing guns and gang signs are the false ones. If, as Chief Inspector Scott Small stated, the police believe that he was shot “by possibly two assailants who then ran from the scene,” turns out to be true, then this was a targeted killing.

References

References
↑1 We were reliably informed by The Philadelphia Inquirer that there are no gangs in the city, just “cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families,” who sometimes had “beefs” with other cliques, so we must replace the term “gang-bangers” with “cliques of young men” or “clique beefers”. District Attorney Larry Krasner and his office seem to prefer the term “rival street groups“.
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Some common sense from the county sheriffs

On November 8th, I will be voting for one Democrat, Estill County Sheriff Chris Flynn. He’s a Marine Corps veteran, and I personally know him to be honest. And, in his auto repair business — which he inherited from his father, and was once again being run by his father once Sheriff Flynn took office following the 2018 election — there are a couple of signs posted showing support for the Second Amendment.

Sheriff Flynn is serious, and has said, publicly, that if given an order to confiscate law abiding citizens’ guns, he would resign before obeying such an order. It seems that he is not alone; from The New York Times:

Another Challenge to New York’s Gun Law: Sheriffs Who Won’t Enforce It

Some say the measure, which was passed after a Supreme Court opinion, ignores common sense, the Second Amendment and the way people live outside big cities.

By Jesse McKinley and Cole Louison | Sunday, October 9, 2022

LYONS, N.Y. — Robert Milby, Wayne County’s new sheriff, has been in law enforcement most of his adult life, earning praise and promotions for conscientious service. But recently, Sheriff Milby has attracted attention for a different approach to the law: ignoring it.

Sheriff Milby is among at least a half-dozen sheriffs in upstate New York who have said they have no intention of aggressively enforcing gun regulations that state lawmakers passed last summer, forbidding concealed weapons in so-called sensitive areas — a long list of public spaces including, but not limited to, government buildings and religious centers, health facilities and homeless shelters, schools and subways, stadiums and state parks, and, of course, Times Square.

Also see: William Teach, Bummer: New York State Sheriffs Refuse To Enforce Highly Restrictive NY Gun Law

“It’s basically everywhere,” said Sheriff Milby, in a recent interview in his office in Wayne County, east of Rochester. “If anyone thinks we’re going to go out and take a proactive stance against this, that’s not going to happen.”

On Thursday, a U.S. District Court judge blocked large portions of the law, dealing a major blow to lawmakers in Albany who had sought to blaze a trail for other states after the Supreme Court in June struck down a century-old New York law that had strictly limited the carrying of weapons in public. Between the court challenge and the hostility of many law enforcement officers, New York’s ambitious effort could be teetering.

The article subtitle really gives the demarcation point, the difference between city and country life. When I lived in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, the county was under the same gun regulation laws as Philadelphia, yet somehow, some way, Carbon County went years between homicides, and the Commonwealth, outside of the City of Brotherly Love, doesn’t have the murder rate as Philly.

In 2020, there were 1,009 murders in the Keystone State, 499, or 49.45%, of which occurred in Philadelphia. According to the 2020 Census, Pennsylvania’s population was 13,002,700 while Philadelphia’s alone was 1,603,797, just 12.33% of Pennsylvania’s totals.

Here’s how the actual numbers work out: there were 510 homicides among 11,398,903 Pennsylvanians not living in Philadelphia, for a homicide rate of 4.474 per 100,000 population, while there were 499 murders among 1,603,797 Philadelphians, which works out to a homicide rate of 31.114 per 100,000. If the gun laws are the problem, why aren’t the homicide rates for Philly and the rest of the Commonwealth fairly similar?

It got worse last year: with 562 homicides in Philly, out of 1027 total for Pennsylvania, 54.72% of all homicides in the Keystone State occurred in Philadelphia. Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located, was second, with 123 killings, 11.98% of the state’s total, but only 9.52% of Pennsylvania’s population.

The other 65 counties, with 78.11% of the state’s total population, had 33.30% of total murders.

So, why are the county sheriffs in upstate New York not giving priority enforcement to the ridiculous gun control laws?  Other than in the five counties making up New York City, sheriffs in the Empire State are elected officials, and they are, therefore, concerned with the opinions of the voters, and most voters in less urbanized counties understand that gun control really doesn’t reduce crime; it simply makes it more difficult for law-abiding citizens from defending themselves.

“We will take the complaint, but it will go to the bottom of my stack,” said Mike Filicetti, the Niagara County sheriff, who appends a Ronald Reagan quote to his emails. “There will be no arrests made without my authorization and it’s a very, very low priority for me.”

The law took effect on Sept. 1, and, at least anecdotally, has been used only sparingly since. Jeff Smith, the sheriff in mostly rural Montgomery County, west of Albany, said his office has had no calls for enforcement of the new law, noting that “almost every household” in his jurisdiction had some sort of gun.

Sheriff Smith, a Republican, said he understands the motives of lawmakers to quell violence and mass shootings, but that the gun law inadvertently targeted lawful gun owners.

“The pendulum swung way too far,” he said.

The left are, of course, aghast. A Twitter user styling herself Silent Spring wasn’t silent at all in giving her opinion: she wants all of those sheriffs fired.

But all law enforcement officials have some discretion, and New York City has been especially aggressive in ordering its employees not to enforce federal immigration laws. The left seem remarkably unconcerned about law enforcement not enforcing the laws the left don’t like.

The dispute evinces a larger rift between Democratic lawmakers in Albany — heavily represented by downstate liberals — and more conservative law enforcement and elected officials upstate. The schism was intensified by the pandemic, with some sheriffs defying Covid occupancy rules for Thanksgiving dinners in 2020, while other Republican county officials refused to abide by mask mandates in schools.

Hey, we defied Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) COVID-19 restrictions for Thanksgiving in 2020, and while our gathering for Thanksgiving dinner did not exceed ten people, they were from more than two separate households. The authoritarian state governors, of course, couldn’t send the gendarmerie to every home to check for compliance, but were depending on officious little pricks and Karens to enforce their illegal orders.

It would not make a difference even if widespread gun control laws actually made a difference in the crime rate; they’d still be mostly unconstitutional. But gun control laws really don’t make a difference, because the actual criminals don’t obey those laws.